Christianity As Mystical Fact

SOMETHING LIKE A VEIL OF SECRECY conceals the manner whereby spiritual
needs were satisfied for those within the older civilizations who
sought a deeper religious and cognitive life than was offered by the
religions of the people. We are led into the obscurity of enigmatic
cults when we inquire into the satisfaction of these needs. Each
individual who finds such satisfaction withdraws himself for some time
from our observation. We see that the religion of the people cannot
give him what his heart seeks. He acknowledges the gods, but he knows
that in the ordinary conceptions of the gods the great enigmas of
existence are not disclosed. He seeks a wisdom which is carefully
guarded by a community of priest-sages. He seeks refuge in this
community for his striving soul. If the sages find him mature they
lead him step by step to higher insight, in a manner hidden from the
eyes of those outside. What happens to him now is concealed from the
uninitiated. For a time he appears to be entirely removed from the
physical world. He appears to be transported into a secret world.  And
when he is returned to the light of day a different, entirely
transformed personality stands before us. This personality cannot find
words sufficiently sublime to express how significant his experiences
were for him. He appears to himself as though he had gone through
death and awakened to a new and higher life, not merely figuratively,
but in highest reality. And it is clear to him that no one can rightly
understand his words who has not had the same experience.

Thus it was with those persons who through the Mysteries were
initiated into that secret wisdom, withheld from the people, and which
shed light upon the highest questions. This secret religion of the
elect existed side by side with the religion of the people. So far as
history is concerned, its source fades into the obscurity where the
origin of peoples is lost. We find this secret religion everywhere
among ancient peoples insofar as we can gain insight concerning them.
The sages of these peoples speak of the Mysteries with the greatest
reverence.  What was concealed in them? And what did they reveal to one
who was initiated into them?

The enigma becomes still more puzzling when we realize that at the
same time the ancients regarded the Mysteries as something dangerous.
The way leading to the secrets of existence went through a world of
terrors. And woe to him who tried to reach them unworthily.  There was
no greater crime than the betrayal of these secrets to the
uninitiated. The traitor was punished with death and confiscation of
property. We know that the poet Aeschylus was accused of having
brought something from the Mysteries to the stage. He was able to
escape death only by fleeing to the altar of Dionysus and producing
legal evidence that he was not an initiate.
(see Note 2)

What the ancients say about these secrets is rich in meaning and can
be variously interpreted. The initiate is convinced that it is sinful
to say what he knows and also that it is sinful for the uninitiated to
hear it. Plutarch speaks of the terror of those about to be initiated,
comparing their state of mind to a preparation for death. Initiation
had to be preceded by a special mode of life. This aimed at bringing
sensuality under the control of the spirit. Fasting, solitary life,
mortification and certain exercises of the soul served this purpose.
The things to which man clings in ordinary life were to lose all value
for him. The whole course of his experience and feeling had to take a
different direction.  There can be no doubt about the meaning of such
exercises and tests. The wisdom to be offered to the neophyte could
produce the right effect upon his soul only if he had previously
changed his lower world of experience. He was inducted into the life
of the spirit. He was to behold a higher world. He could find no
relationship to this world without previous exercises and tests.
Everything depended just on this relationship. Whoever wishes to
understand these things correctly must have known by experience the
intimate facts of the life of cognition. He must know by experience
that two widely divergent relationships are possible in relation to
what is offered by the highest cognition.  The world surrounding man is
his real world at first. He feels, hears and sees its processes.
Because he perceives them with his senses he calls them real and
thinks about them in order to gain insight into their connections.  On
the other hand, what rises in his soul is not real to him at first in
the same sense. It is mere thoughts and ideas. At most, he sees in
them pictures of material reality. They themselves have no reality.
One cannot touch them; one cannot hear nor see them.

Another relationship to the world exists. A person who clings at all
costs to the kind of reality described above, will hardly grasp it. It
enters the lives of certain people at a certain moment. Their whole
relationship to the world is reversed. They call truly real the images
which arise in the spiritual life of their soul. They assign only a
lower form of reality to what the senses hear, touch and see. They
know they cannot prove what they say. They know they can only recount
their new experiences. And they know that in recounting them to others
they are in the position of a man who can see and who imparts his
visual impressions to one born blind. They undertake the communication
of their inner experiences, trusting that they are surrounded by
others, who, although their spiritual eye is still closed, have a
logical understanding which can be strengthened through the power of
what they hear. They believe in humanity and wish to open spiritual
eyes. They can only offer the fruits their spirit itself has gathered;
whether another sees the fruits depends upon whether he has
comprehension for what is seen by a spiritual eye. 
(See Author's Comments)
Something existing in man at first prevents him from seeing with the
eyes of the spirit. First of all he is not here for this purpose. He
is what his senses represent him to be, and his intellect is only the
interpreter and judge of his senses. These senses would fulfill their
mission badly if they did not insist upon the truth and infallibility
of their evidence. From its own point of view, an eye must uphold the
absolute reality of its perceptions, otherwise it would be a bad eye.
The eye is quite right, so far as it goes. It is not deprived of its
rights by the spiritual eye. This spiritual eye allows us to see what
the material eye sees, but in a higher light. Nothing the material eye
sees is denied. But a new radiance, hitherto unseen, shines from it.
Then we know that what we first saw was but a lower reality. We see
this still, but it is immersed in something higher, in the spirit. Now
it is a question of whether we experience and feel what we see.
Whoever is able to bring living experience and feeling to the material
world only, will regard the higher world as a Fata Morgana or as
mere phantasy-images. His feelings are directed entirely toward the
material world. When he tries to grasp spirit images, he seizes
emptiness. When he gropes after them, they withdraw from him. They are
mere thoughts. He thinks them; he does not live in them. They are
pictures, less real to him than fleeting dreams. Compared with his
reality they are like images made of froth which vanish as they
encounter the massive, solidly-built reality of which his senses tell
him.  It is a different matter for the person whose experience and
feelings with regard to reality have changed. For him that reality has
lost its absolute stability, its unquestioned value. His senses and
his feelings need not become blunted. But they begin to doubt their
absolute authority; they leave space for something else. The world of
the spirit begins to animate this space.

At this point a dreadful possibility exists. A man may lose his
experience and feeling of direct reality without finding any new
reality opening before him. He is then suspended in a void. He seems
to himself dead. The old values have disappeared and no new ones have
taken their place. The world and man no longer exist for him.  This is
by no means a mere possibility. At some time or other it happens to
everyone who wishes to attain higher cognition. He reaches a point
where to him the spirit interprets all life as death. Then he is no
longer in the world. He is beneath the world  in the nether world. He
accomplishes the  journey to Hades. It is well for him if he is not
submerged. It is well for him if a new world opens before him. Either
he disappears, or is confronted by a new self. In the latter case a
new sun and a new earth appear to him. Out of spiritual fire the whole
world has been reborn for him.

Thus the initiates describe what happened to them through the
Mysteries. Menippus relates that he journeyed to Babylon in order to
be taken to Hades and brought back again by the successors of
Zoroaster. He says that on his travels he swam across the great water
and that he passed through fire and ice. We hear that the mystics were
terrified by a drawn sword and that blood flowed. We understand such
sayings when we know the point of transition from lower to higher
cognition. We ourselves have felt how all solid matter, all the
material world, has dissolved into water; we have lost the ground from
beneath our feet. Everything we had previously experienced as living
has been killed. The spirit has passed through material life as a
sword pierces a warm body; we have seen the blood of sensuality flow.

But a new life has appeared. We have climbed up from the nether world.
The orator Aristides relates, I thought I touched the god and felt
him draw near, and I was then between waking and sleeping. My spirit
was so light that one who is not initiated cannot speak of it nor
understand it. This new existence is not subject to the laws of lower
life. Growth and decay do not affect it. Much may be said about the
eternal, but one's words will be but sound and smoke,
(see Note 3)
who does not
speak of the same thing as those who speak of it after the journey to
Hades. The initiates have a new conception of life and death. Now for
the first time they are entitled to speak about immortality. They know
that whoever speaks of immortality without the knowledge gained
through initiation does not understand it. The uninitiated attribute
immortality only to something which is subject to the laws of growth
and decay.  The mystics did not desire to gain the mere conviction that
the kernel of life is immortal. In their view, such a conviction would
be worthless. This is because they believed the non-mystic simply does
not have the eternal living within him. If he were to speak of the
eternal, he would speak of nothing. The mystics seek the eternal
itself. They must first awaken the eternal within themselves; then
they can speak of it. Therefore Plato's severe saying has full reality
for them: Whoever is not initiated is submerged in the mire,
(See Author's Comments)
and he alone enters eternity who has experienced mystical life.
Only in this way can the words in the fragment from Sophocles be
understood:

Thrice happy they, who, having seen these rites,
Then pass to Hades: there to these alone
Is granted life, all others evil find.
(see Note 4)

Are not dangers described in speaking of the Mysteries? Is it not
robbing men of happiness, of the most valuable part of life, to lead
them to the gate of the nether world? Terrible is the responsibility
incurred by such an act. And yet, may we shirk this responsibility?
These were the questions the initiate had to ask himself. In his
opinion his knowledge was to the soul of the people as light is to
darkness. But in this darkness dwells innocent happiness. The mystics
were of the opinion that this happiness should not be interfered with
wantonly. For what would have happened in the first place had the
mystic betrayed his secret? He would have spoken words, nothing but
words. Nothing at all would have happened through the experiences and
feelings, which should have evoked the spirit from these words. For
this, preparation, exercises, tests and the complete change of
sense-experience would have been necessary. Without these, the hearer
would have been flung into emptiness, into nothingness. He would have
been deprived of what gave him happiness without being able to receive
anything in exchange. It might be said that one could not have taken
anything from him. For certainly mere words could not change his life
of experience. He could only have experienced reality through the
objects of his senses. One could have given him nothing but a
dreadful, life-destroying apprehension. This could be regarded only as
a crime.
(See Author's Comments)
The above is no longer fully valid today for
the acquisition of spiritual cognition. The latter can be understood
conceptually because modern man has a capacity to form concepts which
the ancients lacked. Today people can be found who have cognition of
the spiritual world through their own experience; they can be
confronted by others who comprehend these experiences conceptually.
Such a capacity for forming concepts was lacking in the ancients.

Ancient Mystery wisdom is like a hothouse plant which must be
cherished and cared for in seclusion. To bring it into the atmosphere
of everyday conceptions is to put it in an element in which it cannot
flourish. It withers away to nothing before the caustic verdict of
modern science and logic. Let us therefore divest ourselves for a time
of all the education we have received through the microscope,
telescope and the ways of thought derived from natural science; let us
purify our hands which have become clumsy and have been too busy
dissecting and experimenting, so that we may enter the pure temple of
the Mysteries. For this a truly unprejudiced mind is necessary.

For the mystic, everything depends primarily upon the frame of mind in
which he approaches what he feels to be the highest, the answers to
the enigmas of existence. Particularly in our time, when only things
pertaining to physical science are recognized as deserving cognition,
it is difficult to believe that for the highest things, everything
depends on a frame of mind. Cognition thereby becomes an intimate
concern of each personality. For the mystic, however, it is so. Tell
someone the solution of the world-enigma! Hand it to him ready-made!
The mystic will consider it nothing but empty sound if the individual
does not confront this solution in the right manner. The solution is
nothing in itself; it disintegrates if it does not kindle in his
feeling the particular fire which is essential. Let a divine being
approach you! It may be nothing or everything. Nothing, if you meet it
in the frame of mind in which you confront everyday things.
Everything, if you are prepared and attuned to it. What it is in
itself is a matter which does not concern you; the point is whether it
leaves you as you were or makes a different man of you. But this
depends solely on you. You must have been prepared by the education
and development of the most intimate forces of your personality so
that what the divine is able to evoke may be kindled and released in
you. What is brought to you depends upon the reception you prepare for it.
Plutarch has given an account of this education; he has spoken of
the greeting the mystic offers the divine being who approaches him:
For the god addresses each one of us as we approach him here with the
words Know Thyself, as a form of welcome, which certainly is in no
wise of less import than Hail; and we in turn reply to him Thou
art, as rendering unto him a form of address which is truthful, free
from deception and the only one befitting him alone, the assertion of
Being.  The fact is that we really have no share in Being, but
everything of a mortal nature is at some stage between coming into
existence and passing away, and presents only a dim and uncertain
semblance and appearance of itself; and if you apply the whole force
of your mind in your desire to apprehend it, it is like unto the
violent grasping of water, which, by squeezing and compression, loses
the handful enclosed, as it spurts through the fingers; even so
Reason, pursuing the exceedingly clear appearance of every one of
those things that are susceptible to modification and change, is
baffled by the one aspect of its coming into being, and by the other
of its passing away; and thus it is unable to apprehend a single thing
that is abiding or really existent. It is impossible to step twice in
the same river are the words of Heraclitus, nor is it possible to lay
hold twice of any mortal substance in a permanent state; by the
suddenness and swiftness of the change in it there comes dispersion
and, at another time, a gathering together; or, rather, not at
another time nor later, but at the same instant it both settles into
its place and forsakes its place; it is coming and going. Wherefore
that which is born of it never attains unto being because of the
unceasing and unstaying process of generation, which, ever bringing
change, produces from the seed an embryo, then a babe, then a child
and in due course a boy, a young man, a mature man, an elderly man, an
old man, causing the first generations and ages to pass away by those
which succeed them. But we have a ridiculous fear of one death, we who
have already died so many deaths, and still are dying! For not only is
it true, as Heraclitus used to say, that the death of fire is birth
for air, and the death of air is birth for water, but the case is even
more clearly to be seen in our own selves: the man in his prime passes
away when the old man comes into existence, the young man passes away
into the man in his prime, the child into the young man, and the babe
into the child. Dead is the man of yesterday, for he is passed into
the man of to-day; and the man of to-day is dying as he passes into
the man of to-morrow. Nobody remains one person, nor is one person;
but we become many persons, even as matter is drawn about some one
semblance and common mold with imperceptible movement. Else how is it
that, if we remain the same persons, we take delight in some things
now, whereas earlier we took delight in different things; that we love
or hate opposite things, and so too with our admirations and our
disapprovals, and that we use other words and feel other emotions and
have no longer the same personal appearance, the same external form,
nor the same purposes in mind? For without change it is not reasonable
that a person should have different experiences and emotions; and if
he changes, he is not the same person, he has no permanent being, but
changes his very nature as one personality in him succeeds to another.
Our senses, through ignorance of reality, falsely tell us that what
appears to be is.
(see Note 5)

Plutarch often shows himself to be an initiate. What he portrays for
us here is an essential condition of the life of a mystic. Man
acquires a wisdom by means of which his spirit sees through the
illusory character of material life. Everything the material nature
regards as existence, as reality, is plunged into the stream of
evolving life. And man himself fares the same as the other things of
the world. He disintegrates before the eyes of his spirit; his
totality is dissolved into parts, into transitory phenomena. Birth and
death lose their distinctive significance; they become moments of
coming into existence, and decay like everything else which happens.
The highest cannot be found in connection with growth and decay. It
can only be sought in something truly lasting, which looks back to
what has been and forward to what is to come. To find what looks
backward and forward is a higher stage of cognition. It is the spirit,
which is revealed in and through the material world. This spirit has
nothing to do with material growth. It does not come into existence
nor decay in the same manner as do sense phenomena. Whoever lives only
in the world of the senses has this spirit latent within him; whoever
sees through the illusory character of the world of the senses has it
as a revealed reality within him. Whoever achieves this insight has
developed a new organ within him. Something has taken place in him, as
in a plant which at first has only green leaves and then puts forth a
colored blossom. Certainly, the forces through which the flower
developed were already latent in the plant before the blossom came
into existence, but they became reality only when this latter took
place. Divine spiritual forces also are latent in the purely material
man, but they are a revealed reality only in the mystic. Therein lies
the transformation that has taken place in the mystic. By his
development he has added something new to the existing world. The
material world has made a material man of him and then left him to
himself. Nature has fulfilled her mission. Her potential connection
with the forces working within man is exhausted. But these forces
themselves are not yet exhausted. They lie as though spellbound in the
purely natural man, awaiting their release. They cannot release
themselves; they vanish into nothing if man himself does not grasp
them and develop them further, if he does not awaken to real existence
what slumbers hidden within him.  Nature evolves from the least to the
most perfect. Nature leads beings by an extensive series of stages
from the inanimate through all forms of life up to material man. Man
in his material nature opens his eyes and becomes aware of himself in
the material world as a real being, capable of transforming itself. He
still observes in himself the forces out of which this material nature
is born. These forces are not the object of transformation because
they gave rise to the transformation. Man bears them within himself as
an indication that something lives within him, transcending his
material perception. What may come into existence through these forces
is not yet present. Man feels something light up within him which has
created everything, including himself; and he feels that this
something will spur him to higher achievement. It is within him; it
existed before his material appearance, and will be there after it.
Through it he has come into being, and he may grasp it, and himself
participate in his creation. Such feelings lived in the ancient mystic
after initiation. He felt the eternal, the divine. His deeds will
become a part of the creative activity of the divine. He may say to
himself: I have discovered a higher  I  within me, but this  I 
surpasses the boundaries of my material growth; it existed before my
birth, it will exist after my death. Creatively this  I  has worked
throughout eternity; creatively it will work in eternity. My material
personality is a creation of this  I . But it has incorporated me
within it; creatively it works in me; I am a part of it. What I am now
able to create is something higher than the material. My personality
is only a medium for this creative force, for this divine, within me.
In this way the mystic experienced his apotheosis.

The mystic named the force thus kindled within him, his true spirit.
He was the result of this spirit. It seemed to him as though a new
being had entered him and taken possession of his organs. This was a
being which stood between his material personality and the Sovereign
Power of the cosmos, the Godhead. The mystic sought his true spirit.
He said to himself, I have become man in the great natural world. But
nature has not completed her task. I myself must take over this
completion. However, I cannot do this in the gross realm of nature to
which my material personality also belongs. Whatever can develop in
this realm has developed. Therefore I must escape from this realm. I
must continue to build in the sphere of the spiritual, where nature
has stood still. I must create for myself a breathing space which
cannot be found in outer nature. This breathing space was prepared for
the mystics in the Mystery temples. There the forces slumbering within
them were awakened; there they were transformed into higher creative
spirit-natures. This transformation was a delicate process. It could
not endure the rough elements of the outdoors. When the process was
completed, through it man had become a rock grounded in the eternal,
able to defy all storms. But he was not permitted to believe that he
could communicate his experiences in their direct form to others.

Plutarch informs us that in the Mysteries it is possible to gain the
clearest reflections and adumbrations of the truth about the daemons.
(see Note 6)
And from Cicero we learn that those occult Mysteries ... when
interpreted and explained prove to have more to do with natural
science than with theology.
(see Note 7)
From such communications we see clearly
that for the mystic there existed a higher insight into natural
science than the religion of the people could give. Moreover this
shows that the daemons, that is, the spiritual beings, and the gods
themselves required explanation. Beings are approached who are of a
higher nature than the daemons and gods. And this is in the nature of
Mystery wisdom. The people pictured gods and daemons in images taken
entirely from the world of material reality. Surely one who could
penetrate the essence of the eternal was bound to lose confidence in
the eternalness of such gods! How could Zeus, as the people pictured
him, be eternal when he had the characteristics of a mortal being?
 One thing was clear to the mystic: man attains his idea of the gods
in a different manner from his ideas about other things. An object in
the external world compels me to form a definitive idea of it. In
contrast to this the formation of ideas of the gods has something
free, even arbitrary, about it. The compulsion of the external world
is lacking. Reflection teaches us that with the gods we imagine
something for which there is no external control. This puts man into a
state of logical uncertainty. He begins to feel that he is the creator
of his gods. He even asks himself: How do I come to transcend physical
reality in my world of ideas? The mystic must devote himself to such
thoughts. The doubts which then beset him were justified. He could
think to himself: Let us simply look at all these ideas of the gods.
Are they not similar to the creatures we meet in the world of the
senses? Has not man created them by mentally adding or subtracting
this or that quality essentially belonging to the world of the senses?
The barbarian who loves hunting creates a heaven for himself in which
the most glorious hunts of the gods take place. The Greek peoples
Olympus with divinities having their prototype in the reality which is
well known to him.

The philosopher Xenophanes (575480 B.C.) referred to this fact with
crude logic. We know that the older Greek philosophers were absolutely
dependent on Mystery wisdom. This will be demonstrated in relation to
Heraclitus in particular. For this reason the saying of Xenophanes can
be accepted without reservation as a conviction based on mystic
knowledge. He says:

But men have the idea that gods are born,
And wear their clothes, and have both voice and shape.
But had the oxen or the lions hands,
Or could with hands depict a work like men,
Were beasts to draw the semblance of the gods,
The horses would them like to horses sketch,
To oxen, oxen, and their bodies make
Of such a shape as to themselves belongs.
(see Note 8)

Through such insight man may become doubtful of everything divine. He
may reject the legends of the gods and acknowledge as reality only
that which his material perceptions compel him to acknowledge. But the
mystic did not become such a doubter. He understood that the doubter
was like a plant which said to itself: My colored blossom is vain and
worthless, for I am complete in my green leaves; what I add to them
only increases the illusory appearance. But neither could the mystic
remain content with the gods thus created, the gods of the people. If
the plant could think, it would understand that the forces which had
created the green leaves are also destined to create the colored
blossom. And it would not rest until it had investigated these forces
for itself in order to see them. So it was for the mystic in relation
to the gods of the people. He did not deny them nor declare them to be
vain, but he knew that they were created by man. The same natural
forces, the same divine elements which work creatively in nature also
work creatively in the mystic. In him also they engender ideas of the
gods. He wishes to see this force which is creating gods. It is not
like the gods of the people; it is something higher. Xenophanes also
indicates this:

One God there is, 'midst gods and men supreme;
In form, in mind, unlike to mortal men.
(see Note 9)

This God was also the God of the Mysteries. He could be called a
hidden God, for nowhere  so it was thought  is He to be
found by the purely material man. Direct your gaze outward toward objects;
you find no divinity. Exert your intelligence; you may understand the laws by
which things come into existence and decay, but your intellect shows
you nothing divine. Saturate your fantasy with religious feeling; you
can create pictures of beings which you may take to be gods, but your
intellect dissects them for you, for it proves to you that you
yourself created them, and borrowed the material for their creation
from the material world. Insofar as you, as intellectual man, consider
the things about you, you must deny the gods. For God is not there for
your senses or intellect, which explain material perceptions. God is
magically concealed in the world. And you need His own force in order
to find Him. This force you must awaken within yourself. These are the
teachings which a neophyte of ancient times received. Then began for
him the great cosmic drama in which he was engulfed alive. This drama
consisted of nothing less than the release of the spellbound God.
Where is God? This was the question the mystic put before his soul.
God is not, but nature is. He must be found in nature. In nature He
has found an enchanted tomb. The words, God is Love, are grasped by
the mystic in a higher sense. For God has carried this Love to its
uttermost. He has given Himself in infinite Love; He has diffused
Himself; He has divided Himself into the manifold variety of natural
things; they live, and He does not live in them. He rests in them. He
lives in man. And man can experience the life of God in himself. If he
is to let Him come to cognition he must release this cognition
creatively in himself.  Man now gazes into himself. As a hidden
creative force, as yet unincarnated, works the divinity in his soul.
In this soul is a place where the spellbound divinity can come to life
again. The soul is the mother who by nature can conceive the divinity.
If the soul is fructified by nature it will give birth to a divinity.
Out of the marriage of the soul with nature a divinity will be born.
This is no longer a hidden divinity; it is revealed. It has life,
perceptible life, and walks among men. It is the released spirit in
man, the offspring of the spellbound divinity. It is not the great
God, who was, is and will be, but it can be taken as His revelation in
a certain sense. The Father rests in concealment, the Son is
born to man out of his own soul. Thus mystic cognition is a real event in the
cosmic process. It is the birth of an offspring of God. It is an event
as real as any other natural event, only on a higher level. This is
the great secret of the mystic, that he himself creatively releases
his divine offspring, but he also prepares himself beforehand to
acknowledge this divine offspring created by himself. The non-mystic
lacks the experience of the father of this offspring. For this father
slumbers under a spell. The offspring appears to be virginally born.
The soul appears to have borne him without fructification. All its
other offspring are conceived by the material world. In their case the
father can be seen and touched. He has material life. The divine
offspring alone is conceived of the eternal, hidden Father  God
Himself.